GTO - The Editorial Fairing Project

GTO - The Editorial Fairing Project

Build Process - Part 4

OK, where were we? We had two halves of a fairing, which required sticking together around the edges. As the illustration in the previous instalment showed, this was achieved by cunning use of Corriboard. Small rectangles thereof were glued to both the inside and the outside of one half, and the other half laid on top, wedged into place with whatever came to hand - bricks, Workmate, wood, can of resin, etc. etc. Then small strips of 2" glass tape were used to join the two halves together on the inside. Following this, a second, continuous layer of tape was applied over the above, and another one on the outside to smooth off the joint a bit. At this point I added an extra layer of woven rovings inside the nose as insurance against the sort of things I'm likely to hit while commuting, and drilled out a hole for one of the front lights with a hole saw. The position of this was carefully chosen to disguise an extremely manky bit of the join.

Next, the whole thing was turned upside down and placed on top of the Workmate, and the wheel openings cut out. This was taking about five years with a hacksaw blade, so I eventually gave up and bought an electric saw. Next the bomb doors were cut out and carefully put to one side. Next the fairing was stuffed into the shed and abandoned for six weeks while:

I was going to, at, or returning from, the European Championships
I was recovering from the Dreadful Lurgi which Paul London had passed to Geoff Bird and thence to me
I was suffering from apathy

But eventually I dug it out of the shed. No, I didn't, or not yet anyway.The "design" of the GTO calls for a substantial "wheelarch" for the rear wheel. Trying to incorporate this into the main body was contemplated, but rapidly dropped in favour of making a separate moulding, so the next phase of the proceedings was to carve and seal a plug and lay up the wheelarch. This was done in precisely the same manner as the main mouldings. At this point I also knocked up a pair of stands to allow the shell to stand upright without the benefit of a wall to lean on - a suitably-shaped curved bit was sawn out of a handy lump of chipboard and four right-angled shelf supports screwed to it to hold it upright. The wheelarch was then extricated from the plug, glued roughly into place in the rear of the shell and permanently joined around the edges with more 2" glass tape. Then a suitably-sized hole was cut in the forward face of the wheelarch to allow the frame, chain, rear mech. etc. to pass though without having to perform major surgery on the machine. Fortunately, once the nose, tailbox, seat and wheels on the bike in its current configuration have been removed, and the handlebars turned sideways, the remainder of the bike does fit, though not without some bad language and judicious bending.

It fits, Dandini, it fits!

The bike gets its first (but by no means its last) fitting

The alternative would have been to hoik off the pedals, and possibly the chainset, so bad language and bending seemed to be the way to go. Start to reassemble bike. Front wheel - easy. Rear wheel - not as difficult as I had feared. Seat - uh-oh! Due to what can only be described as a mistake, the seat cannot be pushed far enough back without coming into heavy contact with the wheelarch. This was because I had failed to notice that while the overall height of the wheelarch moulding itself was correct, I hadn't taken account of the fact that the curvature of the bottom of the shell meant that the whole thing was a couple of inches higher up than it was supposed to be. Three options:

cut the entire wheelarch out, make a new smaller one
cut the entire wheelarch out, cut the requisite amount off the bottom, reinsert
cut the offending chunks out of the wheelarch in situ, replace with Corriboard artfully arranged not to interfere with the seat
cut the entire fairing into small pieces, weight with bricks and drop into the River Lea

At the moment, 3 is favourite, but if it turns out not to be possible, the resultant mess of the wheelarch means that 1 will have to be implemented instead. A good job I haven't thrown the plug out yet! Goodness knows when I'll get the time to do it, though, as it's now dark when I get home in the evenings and weekends are full of other stuff.

And so it came to pass that option 3 was tried, but the loss of integrity in the wheelarch moulding meant that option 1 turns out to be the only feasible one. This has made me a little bit cross. Anyway, the new one has now been fabricated, and this weekend I intend to attach it to the rest of the fairing. That will then leave only the lid to lay up, separate from its plug and trim to size, stiffening ribs to install, mountings to design, build and fit, luggage bay door to sort, internal dividers to install, window holes to cut out, polycarbonate to install in the said windows, bomb doors to fit, the whole lot to be given a top coat of glass tissue, paint, install lights and other accessories, practice riding for a bit and give the entire bike a long-overdue strip, clean and assortment of new oily bits. And build (or maybe buy) a new back wheel.

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